


such a fool for sacrifice

by extasiswings



Series: a love like religion [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avocados at Law, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Law School, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 08:18:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4739330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So, what exactly is a tort anyway?” </p><p>“I’m sorry?” </p><p>It’s the first time in a long time that hearing those words actually makes her brain sit up and take notice, but Darcy dismisses it only moments later because he doesn’t act any differently and what are the odds of her soulmate being her TA anyway? </p><p>(Apparently they're pretty good)</p>
            </blockquote>





	such a fool for sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shuofthewind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/gifts).



> I wanted to write ridiculous, cute, dorks-in-love law school fic. Instead, this happened. I blame shuofthewind almost exclusively for being a terrible enabler and also for Darecy. I blame her a lot for Darecy actually. 
> 
> Anyway. Happy Reading!

The thing about soulmates is that sure, they’re nice and all, but they also aren’t all that. Plenty of people never meet their soulmates or lose them or simply decide they don’t want them and live perfectly good and happy lives. That is, at least, what Darcy Lewis has been told her entire life, because when you have a soulmark as generic as, _I’m sorry_ , people tend to want to prepare you for the possibility that you won’t meet your soulmate.

(It gets kind of annoying actually, because she’s never put too much stock in soulmates to begin with since her parents are a pretty good example of them being more trouble than they’re worth, and if she’s honest, she would rather not have one at all because what gives fate/the universe/whatever the right to decide who her “perfect match” is anyway)

By the time she’s 16, Darcy’s had over twelve potential soulmate meetings and her parents are finally getting divorced, and that’s around the point at which she decides flat out that she genuinely does not care anymore. As far as she’s concerned, if her soulmate wants to have a relationship with her, they’re going to have to be the one to tell her she said their words.

There’s something kind of freeing about essentially flipping off the universe because after that, Darcy finds she’s a lot happier. A month after she turns 18, she packs her bags for Culver and doesn’t look back. In college, she dates who she wants, sleeps with who she wants, makes friends with who she wants, and there’s no more voice in her head wondering about each, _I’m sorry_ , she meets.

(Jane’s first words to her, ironically enough, are “I’m sorry,” and Darcy thinks for the briefest of seconds that she could be okay with being matched with an amazing, scatter-brained, slip of an astrophysicist, but is also just fine when Jane reveals that her soulmark is a strange rainbow colored symbol)

Thor shows up and the world changes. If soulmates weren’t already the last thing on Darcy’s mind, they certainly would have been after that because a small town gets leveled by a fiery robot thing from another world and all she can think about is who’s responsible, so she signs the world’s largest stack of NDAs and goes back to Culver to finish her degree.

(She thinks about staying with Jane for a little while, but astrophysics really isn’t her field and she can stay friends with Jane without being her intern, so she helps her go through the short stack of replacement applications and then leaves her with her phone number and promises to call at least once a week)

The thing is, Darcy considers law school before New Mexico because if you’re poli-sci, that’s kind of a given, but it’s New Mexico that really makes up her mind. The law is changing, that much is obvious. She sees it as early as Tony Stark’s first appearances as Iron Man, then later on, in his congressional hearings, but SHIELD really cements it for her.

(Phil Coulson gives her a card after she lectures him for ten minutes about property rights and the Fourth Amendment and tells her that SHIELD is always looking for good legal minds. It doesn’t hit her until an hour after she takes said card that he may have been offering her a future job)

Going back to school is difficult at first because who wants to be in school, let alone preparing to take the LSAT and complete law school applications, after finding out that gods or aliens or whatever are real and shady government agencies are in place to prevent the general public from knowing about them? But nonetheless, Darcy passes her last semester of classes with flying colors and ends the year with shiny acceptance letters to Columbia, Stanford, and Georgetown. She picks Columbia because…well, if she’s honest, she doesn’t know exactly why. Possibly because she has D.C in her sights so California is a little far and Georgetown seems too on the nose, but she can’t say for sure. It’s a feeling, really, that New York is just…right.

Regardless of the reason, Darcy packs her bags again and moves. She considers looking for an apartment, but her scholarship package includes university housing, so she nixes that idea rather quickly, instead choosing to invest what she otherwise might have spent on rent money into a new professional wardrobe.

Law school is hard. That’s the impression she gets from orientation and the rest of her first week of classes, but by the end of her first month, she still isn’t drowning, so she marks that as a win. Law school is hard, but there are things that make it worth it. Some of these things are practical, like the understanding that she’s building up a base of knowledge to help people get justice down the line, but then there are others that are very, very shallow, like the giant crush she has on her Torts TA.

(It’s so shallow, really, but Matt’s a 3L and he’s smart and funny and ridiculously attractive and even if she never speaks to him, he sits at the front of class every day, so at least she has some eye candy to look at while Professor Williams drones on and on about negligence and absolute liability)

It’s halfway through the semester when Darcy finally meets him officially. She’s not an idiot; she knows nothing is going to come of her ridiculous crush, but when she sees him in class, his knuckles look bruised to hell and she thinks she catches a hint of a wicked shiner behind his glasses, so she shows up at his office hours with coffee and a plan to casually introduce herself. Of course, because she rarely comes off as calm and collected as she means to, when he opens the door, what comes out of her mouth is, “So, what exactly is a tort anyway?”

(She misses the way he freezes because she moves past him to set the coffee she brought down on the desk, but, as she reflects years later, she really could have saved them some time and trouble if she’d only been paying more attention)

“I’m sorry?”

It’s the first time in a long time that hearing those words actually makes her brain sit up and take notice, but Darcy dismisses it only moments later because he doesn’t act any differently and what are the odds of her soulmate being her TA anyway?

“A tort,” she repeats. “I mean, obviously torts is the field of law related to civil redress, but it’s such a ridiculous word that I was just wondering why we call it that. It’s kind of been bugging me the whole semester, really, and I guess I could look it up, but I also thought, hey, Matt would know, maybe I should just ask him.”

Despite her babbling, she thinks she catches a hint of a smile as Matt makes his way from the door to the other side of the desk, setting his cane on the floor once he settles in the chair.

“Well, Miss—I’m sorry, I don’t think I caught your name.”

“Darcy Lewis. And just Darcy’s fine.”

“Darcy, then. To answer your question, the word origin can be traced from Middle English to Old French, and from there to the Medieval Latin word “tortum” meaning “wrong” or “injustice,” to the Latin word “torquere” although why they decided to go with the word meaning “to twist” and not something a little more relevant is beyond me.”

“So…definitely not after the dessert then,” Darcy jokes, and that time, the smile she catches is unmistakable.

“Definitely not after the dessert, no,” Matt acknowledges with a small laugh.

They fall into an easy friendship after that, especially when she meets his best friend Foggy Nelson after he runs into her following her Civil Procedure class one day, sending her books flying and knocking her much-needed coffee from her hands.

(He’s extremely apologetic and both picks up her books and offers to buy her another coffee, so she definitely doesn’t hold a grudge. When he finds out she’s in Matt’s class, he starts regaling her with stories of Matt as a 1L, and well, anyone who gives her that kind of teasing ammunition definitely achieves friend status)

Of course, Matt and Foggy are both 3Ls, so she sees less of them as the year goes on, especially once Torts is over and Matt isn’t her TA anymore. She gets it; they’re both trying to score internships at Landman & Zack for after graduation (she judges them for it, but not too harshly) and they have the bar to think about. Plus, it’s not like she doesn’t have other friends, so she’s mostly okay with it, especially since Foggy still calls her up randomly to drag her out drinking because, “It’s ‘bar review,’ Lewis. Get it? Bar review?”

(Sometimes, she thinks back to her first meeting with Matt and wonders, especially because of how well they get along. None of them really talk about soulmates, although she does find out from Foggy one night that Matt’s mark is apparently in Braille, so even though he’s seen it, he couldn’t tell her what it says)

The world changes again the week after she finishes her 1L year. Aliens fall out of the sky in Manhattan, Thor appears again, SHIELD becomes a slightly less shady government agency, and apparently the “Avengers” are a thing. Well. Okay. Darcy calls Jane immediately after she sees Thor on the news, only to hear that she’s not even in the country (and, wow, as if she didn’t have enough reasons to be pissed at SHIELD), and then gets a call from SHIELD themselves, and yes, okay, that is an actual job offer.

(She says she has to think about it because she still ostensibly has two years of school left and also because she has extremely mixed feelings about SHIELD and their general sketchiness, but when she hangs up, she calls her adviser and works out a plan to graduate a year early)

The next year passes in a blur, almost a literal one because trying to cram two years of law school into one is the farthest thing from easy and she basically only gets through it by living on caffeine and no sleep. The day she signs up to take the bar, SHIELD calls her again, offering her the more specific position of “SHIELD liaison and associate legal counsel for the Avengers Initiative” and she accepts.

Accepting the position comes with several perks, including the option of living in Avengers Tower, but Darcy elects to crash with Foggy for a few weeks instead while she looks for other housing options because free housing is great, but literally living at work, not so much.

(Living with Foggy is excellent, at least in part because she gets to tease him in between his rants on how he and Matt are going to be homeless in a year about how neither one of them were ever going to be sharks and she could have told them that from the beginning)

In the end, Darcy finds an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. When pressed, she points out that it’s less expensive than Brooklyn and that she really doesn’t want to live in Queens or the Bronx, but she would be lying if she said the presence of her boys—and they are her boys, aren’t they—didn’t have at least some effect on her decision.

She only regrets her decision once, the night the bombs go off, supposedly set by the so-called Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, but even then, she’s still at the Tower when it happens, and her apartment isn’t damaged when Captain America escorts her home—Captain America, seriously, what is her life—so she gets over it.

Her own job keeps her pretty busy, but she makes time to stop by Nelson & Murdock at least once a week, and brings coffee more often than not. She and Karen get along like a house on fire, much, she thinks, to Foggy’s chagrin, because she sees the massive crush he has on Karen and teases him mercilessly.

(“Oh, come on, Foggy-bear.”

“Foggy-bear?”

“I can’t believe you, Lewis. Where is the loyalty? I thought we were never going to speak of that again.”

“I considered it, but I thought Karen should really know what she’s getting herself into if she’s going to work for you two losers.”

“Mean. You’re mean. Why do we let you come here?”

“Because I bring coffee and you all love me?”

“…Right.”)

There’s one day in particular that concerns her though. A few weeks after the bombings, she stops by N&M before going to work only to find the sign she’d seen designs for days earlier in the trash with neither of her boys anywhere to be found.

(She runs into Karen on her way out and hears that Matt’s apparently been in a car accident, and what the hell, why didn’t either of them call her, but when she calls him he tells her to go to work and not to worry about him, as if that was something she would ever not do, and she considers ignoring him and going to his apartment, but then Maria texts with an emergency and she’s kind of stuck)

When Darcy does go to see Matt, his apartment is a mess, as if someone had started a knock-down-drag-out fistfight in the middle of the room and not bothered to pick up after. She ignores that though, because he looks terrible, absolutely terrible, hunched in on himself and so tired that she has to bite back a lecture on taking care of himself.

She only stays for about an hour, just long enough to make sure he eats something and get him settled into bed with promises that he will actually sleep. She tries asking about Foggy, but that elicits a flinch that she can tell he’s trying to hide, so she doesn’t push.

(She’s usually a no-bullshit, get straight to the heart of the problem kind of person, but she does tiptoe around this issue a little because neither of them want to talk about it and she’s never seen or heard of them fighting like this ever and she’s not really sure her usual methods are going to be helpful)

They make up without her assistance, however, or at least it seems like they make up, because the next time she sees them together, there’s none of the terrible tension that had been there before and they’re representing someone named Hoffman in a plea deal to take down someone named Fisk who apparently owns half the cops in the city, and damn, she knows she’s been busy, but she’s missed a hell of a lot.

After that, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is re-branded Daredevil in a blog post by Ben Urich and every paper in the city picks up on it. As someone who works with superheroes on a daily basis, Darcy can’t help but be slightly wary of vigilante heroes working outside the system, but she dismisses her reservations after Jane points out that none of the Avengers even knew this Fisk thing was happening in their own backyard and that it’s for the best that someone was around to deal with it.

(She can’t help but wish she could meet the guy though, if only to say thanks and maybe extend an invitation to Avengers Tower sometime)

She gets her wish a month later when she’s walking home from the subway and hears something coming from the alley nearest to her building. What she finds when she looks is the elusive masked man in his snazzy new outfit, slamming closed the lid of…a dumpster?

“Hey, uh, Daredevil, right?”

He doesn’t run, but he looks a little like he wants to, so Darcy takes a step back and holds up her hands.

“It’s okay, you’re fine. I just wanted to say thanks, I guess. For everything with Fisk and everything else. I’m Darcy, Darcy Lewis. I work with the Avengers, and I thought you should know that, uh, they all, we all really appreciate what you’re doing here.”

He still doesn’t move, but he’s definitely looking at her now, his head cocked slightly as if he’s hyper-focused on what she’s saying—

(—and that gesture is so familiar, so ridiculously familiar, but she can’t quite place it—)

—and it’s almost a little unnerving, but she stays put anyway.

“So, yeah. Thanks. And, if you ever wanted to swing by the Tower sometime, I’m sure everyone would be pretty interested in meeting you.”

The awkward silence that follows is almost enough to get her to just leave the alley, but right when she starts to step back again, he stops her.

“I’m not sure the Avengers are really my kind of people, Miss Lewis,” he says, and even his voice is familiar, although she thinks she would have remembered meeting him before. “But I’ll think about it.”

He leaves before she can say another word, using the dumpster as a springboard to a metal strut that’s sticking out of the adjacent building and swinging up to the roof from there. Darcy just watches him go with wide eyes, her brain helpfully pointing out that parkour competitions between this guy and Steve would be epic.

It’s pure curiosity that inspires her to check the dumpster. It’s a pretty typical dumpster, but the white cane in the corner catches her eye, and that’s the point at which she closes the lid again and hurries back to her apartment because her mind is going in a direction that it absolutely should not be going and she clearly needs sleep.

(Clearly, because right now her brain is telling her that the reason Daredevil seemed familiar is because he’s actually her blind best friend and is basing this thought on the most circumstantial of evidence like gestures and a cane in a dumpster and the fight between Matt and Foggy and the fact that Matt’s been injured so freaking often and the fact that all of those injuries corresponded to times when Daredevil was active and holy shit, no, that’s crazy right? That’s crazy)

So, Darcy goes to sleep to stop herself from continuing down that line of thought, but the next morning, her mind is active again, so she gets up and just goes to Matt’s apartment, because obviously, the best way to get herself to stop thinking crazy is to just ask him, “Hey, so, are you the vigilante that’s been running around saving the day?”

(That’s what she means to say, but it takes her a minute to get it out because Matt’s pulling on a shirt when he opens the door and even though she doesn’t see much, she does catch a glimpse of his soulmark by his hip, shining silver in the light from the hallway, and it’s the first time she’s actually seen it and there’s a ridiculous part of her that wants to reach out and trace it)

“Darcy?”

She clears her throat as her eyes snap back to his face and tries very hard not to blush, because no, she’s been over her crush on him for years and she has a “no checking out best friends” policy in place that she really tries to stick to.

“Are you Daredevil?” The words come without her actively thinking about them, because part of her thinks she should have built up to that question, but she’s a little flustered still and that seems like a good way to get herself back to equal footing.

She expects him to say no. She expects him to laugh and tease her for thinking something so ridiculous so that she can laugh and then they can go get coffee or something and just be normal. Matt doesn’t laugh. He freezes. He goes so still that she wonders if she’s broken him and then he pulls her inside faster than she’s ever seen him move before and shuts the door behind her.

“Matt?” And Darcy has to ask again, because no, this is still the most ridiculous thing, “Are you—”

“Yes. Yes, I—yes.”

He answers, but it takes her a minute to process it, and he’s looking at her like he’s afraid she’s going to leave or have him arrested or scream or something and it’s the most ridiculous thing that her blind best friend is a vigilante/superhero and so she laughs.

She laughs until she wheezes, until there are tears leaking from her eyes because what even is her life that she can’t get away from any of this, and it’s not funny, it really isn’t, because Matt’s obviously almost died at least once in the past year, but she has to deal with this somehow and inappropriate, slightly hysterical laughter seems like the best option.

(Matt’s looking at her like he’s wondering if she needs to be committed, but she’ll take that over the other look because she’s offended by him even considering that she would leave because of this)

“You’re a lawyer,” is what finally comes out when Darcy can speak between laughter, because that’s the point that her mind is apparently stuck on.

“And sometimes, the law isn’t equipped to deal with certain things,” he replies, which, okay, sure, she can agree with that. He’d been present for a lot of her class arguments in Torts about what actually counts as justice after all, but that almost makes the whole lying to her thing worse because he had to have known she would be okay with it, right?

“Are you actually blind?” And at that point she’s mostly stopped laughing and anger has started to take over because the reality of her best friend lying to her for years has set in and _what the fuck_.

Matt sighs. “Yes. I am actually blind. I can see…in a manner of speaking with my other senses, but I don’t see like you do.”

“You lied to me.” He flinches at that, as if she’s struck him, but she can’t bring herself to care if he’s hurt by it because she’s definitely no longer laughing and _he lied to her_.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why? Darcy, you would have thought—”

“I would have thought what, Matt? What exactly would I have thought? In case it missed your astounding sense of observation, I work with the Avengers. I work with heroes who for the most part are operating outside of the law every single day. My job is literally to make sure they don’t end up in jail or in front of Congress with no justifications for their actions. So, please, do enlighten me, what exactly would I have thought?”

Matt’s face is raw and vulnerable in a way she’s never seen it before when he takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “I didn’t…”

“You didn’t trust me,” Darcy fills in.

“No. No, that’s not—”

“Then, what, Matt? Because from where I’m standing, that’s the only reason. You didn’t trust me, so you didn’t tell me. That’s what it boils down to.”

“I never wanted you to know this part of me.”

“So you didn’t trust me to handle it. Did you honestly think so little of me that you didn’t even consider that maybe I could? Or that I might want to? You thought if I knew, I would just, what, leave?”

“That’s not—” She’s frustrated him now, she can tell, because there’s a clench to his jaw that he only gets when he’s being either particularly stubborn or particularly Catholic or both. “I didn’t ever want you to _have_ to handle it. I was trying to protect you.”

“Oh my God, do you hear yourself when you speak sometimes? Trying to protect me? I don’t need your protection, Murdock. When have I ever needed protecting? Also, logical flaw, counselor, having all of the facts is what will guarantee me the greatest amount of protection. Always.”

(She hasn’t asked him yet, but she’s pretty sure that this is what he and Foggy fought about, because she and Foggy are pretty similar and the lying and the bullshit justifications? Not something that’s going to fly with either of them.)

Matt opens his mouth and then closes it without speaking and she stares him down because damn it, she’s a lawyer too and just because she doesn’t do as much actual litigation as he does doesn’t mean she isn’t just as good. The silence stretches on for a minute or so and she watches the fight slowly drain out of him. Once it’s gone, he just looks tired, and even though she’s so angry with him she could scream, she also kind of still wants to hug him.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally, so quietly that she almost misses it. “I never wanted to hurt you. I honestly believed I was doing the right thing at first, and then…well, after that, I’d already been lying for so long I wasn’t sure how to tell you.”

“I think, ‘hey, by the way, I’m Daredevil’ might have worked pretty well, especially since I’m pretty sure you already used Foggy as a test case.” It’s snarky, but there also isn’t as much heat in it as there could be. The thing is, Darcy doesn’t like fighting with Matt. She never has. It’s very rare that one of them will do something that really and truly upsets the other, unlike she and Foggy who have much shorter fuses with one another, so fighting with Matt just feels wrong, even with something like this when she knows he deserves it.

“I’m sorry,” Matt says again, and God, he looks so defeated and more than a little like he still expects her to walk away, and she really could smack him for that if it weren’t so goddamn sad, because even now he doesn’t trust her to stay and she thinks she might have to spend the rest of her life proving that she will.

“I don’t forgive you yet,” she admits, even as she takes a step forward, reaching out to press one hand to the middle of his chest. “I need some time before I think I’ll be able to do that entirely. And I’m not going to say it’s okay, because it’s not. But I will forgive you, eventually, and I’m still going to be here in the meantime. Okay?”

Darcy feels the shudder that goes through him when her hand makes contact, the shakiness of his exhale in the moment after she finishes speaking, but he also doesn’t push her away, so she counts it as a win.

“Okay.”

“Okay. Don’t ever lie to me again. It’s not cool, and if it becomes a habit, I’m really not going to be able to keep forgiving you,” she acknowledges as she slips her hands around to his back to hug him, mostly because she can’t remember the last time she hugged him and that means it’s been way too long. He stiffens at first, but then relaxes, his own arms coming up to tentatively circle around her.

“Okay,” he breathes, and she can feel it against her hair.

“Anything else you’d like to confess while we’re here?” Darcy means it as a joke, but Matt freezes again and takes a step back, breaking her hold, although he catches her hands in his before they fall to her sides.

“My soulmark is in Braille,” he hedges, his thumbs tracing over her knuckles.

“Surprisingly enough, I did know that,” she replies.

“It says ‘So, what exactly is a tort anyway’.” Then it’s her turn to freeze, because that sounds familiar, really familiar, but that’s almost as ridiculous as the thought of him being Daredevil because that would mean that he’s her soulmate and never said a word.

“I said that,” Darcy says slowly. “I said that, the first time we met. And you said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and I didn’t say anything because I assumed that with the endless number of ‘I’m sorry’s that get said on a daily basis, that my soulmate might have the decency to tell me if I said their words. So, I’m going to need you to spell out exactly what you’re saying here, so that I’m not jumping to conclusions.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m your soulmate.”

She’s hitting him almost before she’s aware that her hand is moving. Her fist collides with his jaw, and she’s pretty sure she just hurt herself more than she hurt him, but goddammit, he deserved it, and her anger has returned in full force.

“You asshole. You asshole! Who does that? Who actually…if you don’t want to be someone’s soulmate, that’s fine, but then you say that, you don’t keep it to yourself and befriend them all the while knowing…goddammit, Matthew Murdock, I love you, but I want to kill you sometimes.”

“I didn’t think—”

“You didn’t think, what? What reason did you have for that one, Matt? Because that’s one of the most dick moves I could possibly imagine, and I wouldn’t have expected it from you, not even after everything else. Your soulmate? Jesus, are you kidding?”

“I didn’t think I deserved you!” And that’s the farthest thing from what she expects that her mouth snaps shut and she just has to stare at him because, _what_?

Matt looks away from her and rakes a hand roughly through his hair. “I just…the night before we met, I put three different guys in the hospital. One was a serial rapist, one just a guy who liked to beat his girlfriend, and the last one was a drug smuggler who had a small side business in human trafficking. I put them in the hospital, almost killed them, and the next day, you walked into my office and said my words and I just…I didn’t deserve you. I don’t. So, that’s why I didn’t tell you.”

“Matt…”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have given you a choice, but honestly, I never expected that you would meet Foggy, that we would all become friends, that I would want to be around you as much as I do even knowing that I don’t—it was selfish of me and unfair to you and I’m sorry.”

“Stop.” He looks up at her then, and it’s so focused that she’s the one who has to look away.

“Just, stop, for a second, because I need to make something extremely clear and I’m not sure how many times I’m going to be able to say it, so, just stop.”

Darcy takes a deep breath before stepping forward back into his space, and she’s not touching him, won’t touch him until he asks, but part of the making things clear involves being as present as possible, so this is how she’s doing that.

“You do not get to decide whether or not you “deserve” me or what I “deserve” or any of that. That’s number one. Secondly, there’s a fairly good sized part of me that thinks the fact that you put rapists and abusers and traffickers in the hospital is a good thing because you know as well as I do that there are certain crimes for which justice does not happen more often than not because the system itself is stacked against the victims, and although maybe I should, I can’t see anything wrong with filling in where the law leaves off. Thirdly…thirdly, I’ve been in love with you for a pretty long time now, so if you feel even remotely similar, I’d very much like to try and make this work.”

She doesn’t touch him, but her hand hovers in the air, caught between wanting to touch him and wanting to let him come to her, and she lets out a sigh of relief when he takes it once more.

“How are you so…who are you?” And his voice is so full of wonder that her heart breaks a little because the fact that his soulmate wants him should not be so hard to believe and she wants to hurt whoever it was who made him feel unworthy.

“Darcy Lewis, soulmate. But you’ve known that for years, so if it’s all the same to you, I think we should skip the introductions and you should just kiss me. Preferably as soon as possible.”

Matt laughs, but his other arm circles around her waist and pulls her to him, and then he’s dipping his head and _oh, that’s nice_.

“Why haven’t we been doing that for years?” Darcy asks a little breathlessly when she pulls back.

“I believe that would be because I’m an asshole, as you so eloquently put it earlier,” he replies, and she just shakes her head and pulls him in again.

It’s not perfect. They still have a lot of things to talk about, a lot of problems to work through, and Darcy thinks he’s probably never going to stop being an idiot, although admittedly, that’s one of the reasons why she loves him so much. Those things can come a little later though.

For now, she’d rather just be.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Coming Down" by Halsey, which is just SUCH a Darecy song I can't even.


End file.
